Public relations experts share their best social media tips and tricks

When used correctly, social media opens opportunities to network and grow for most companies. Social media experts offered their best practices, strategies and tips in order to help your company maximize its online presence.

Strategies for social media

Make sure your company goals and social media goals are aligned, Dawn Buzynski, said. While social media is an inexpensive PR tool used to boost your company’s brand awareness, it must correspond with overall plans. For example, if your company’s goal is to retain current customers, then your social media posts should target current customers by giving them interesting content.

You should always evaluate your social media. Just posting and hoping for the best is not enough. Buzynski also says to follow the Three Os method:

Outputs.

Outgrowths.

Outcomes.

By evaluating engagement on published posts, you can learn what works with your audience and what doesn’t.

Many experts say to keep posts short and simple.

When posting on social media, you should consider what platform is most appropriate for different topics, audiences and times of the day, Becca McClure, social media specialist at Axia Public Relations contributed.

Information provided by Sprout Social. Graphic by Jordan McCrary

Challenges with social media

Many marketers and companies tend to neglect social media or, they oversell on it. It’s important to strike the right balance.

Images are a critical part of social media, McClure said. Images draw in far more people compared to posts without visuals. However, it can often be difficult to shoot appropriate photos for posts instead of resorting to stock photography. Real photos with real people pay off. They make posts more attractive, interesting and genuine. Companies should also subtly add their logo on images to help push their brand.

A big challenge that companies face is internet trolls, or people who like to write and share inappropriate images and comments on posts, Debra Bethard-Caplick says. Companies need to be prepared to deal with these trolls and have a (consistent) plan on what exactly they’ll do when trolling happens.

Ways to make your social media pages unique

Don’t be afraid to get creative. McClure advised to use tools like emojis, especially when targeting millennials.

Bethard-Caplick said don’t forget to use hashtags!

Hashtags are a great way for your company to get discovered by others, and it’s extremely important that you search the hashtag you want to use before launching a social media campaign with it. You want to make sure another company or cause hasn’t used it before so the results are appropriate.

Things you should never do on social media

Never overshare content, Penny Sansevieri advised. Posting the same content on different platforms can make users bored and cause users to unfollow you page. And they’ll unfollow you if you post too often too. Always focus on quality over quantity.

Be very cautious about political opinions, Rose Safar, Marketing and Communications Director at Landmark Title said. Like anything else on the internet, once you post it, you can’t take it back. Even if you delete a post, internet trolls and archive engines retain deleted posts. It happens all the time.

Take Action

By using these tips and suggestions from PR professionals, you can help your company maximize social media efforts in order to reach and communicate with your audience.